


Out of the Frying Pan

by rionaleonhart



Category: Glee
Genre: Dragons, M/M, Unicorns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-28
Updated: 2010-12-02
Packaged: 2019-07-07 18:24:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15913770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rionaleonhart/pseuds/rionaleonhart
Summary: "Look," Blaine says. "You have bullies; we have dragons. You can't tell me you thought your new school wasn't going to haveanyproblems."





	1. Chapter 1

He misses his friends at McKinley, of course, but Kurt can’t deny that Dalton is amazing. Nobody shoves him into lockers; nobody throws slushies in his face. Fashion-wise, the uniform is extremely limiting, but at least it’s reasonably stylish; he’s not being forced to dress in heliotrope and puce every day. The food is good. The entire building is beautiful. And, of course, there’s Blaine.

Kurt can’t stop thinking that it all feels a little too perfect, too good to be true. Something has to be wrong with this place, and when he finds out what it is it’s only going to hurt more in contrast to all the beauty around it. Maybe Dalton’s the base of an underground drug ring. Maybe the Warblers have a ban on Broadway hits.

Something _is_ wrong with this place, it turns out, but it’s not really any of the possibilities Kurt has considered.

-

Kurt’s first session as a Warbler doesn’t go exactly as planned, to say the least.

“Slight problem with the rehearsal,” Wes says, indicating the hall with a tilt of his head. “Dragon.”

Blaine gives an obviously exaggerated sigh. “You’re serious? _Again?_ ”

“We had three last week,” David says quietly to Kurt. It sounds like it’s supposed to be an explanation, but it doesn’t really explain anything at all.

“I’ll deal with it,” Blaine says. “Kurt, you want to back me up?”

The ‘dragon’ is probably a really intimidating teacher or something. Well, that’s fine; Kurt can provide backup for that. He’s not about to let Blaine down. _Courage,_ he tells himself. “I will.”

Blaine grins blindingly at him and pushes open the door, and Kurt follows him through, feeling, incorrectly, that seeing that expression is probably enough to make up for whatever might be on the other side.

The dragon in question isn’t exactly difficult to miss, but it’s so incredibly _weird_ that it takes Kurt’s brain a moment to register what his eyes are telling him. The moment it does, he stops dead.

“Oh, my God, that’s a dragon.”

“It is a dragon,” Blaine agrees. “You know, I thought you might have got that from Wes saying it was a dragon.”

It’s a dragon. It’s black and scaly and it has to duck its head to avoid brushing the high ceiling of the rehearsal hall (how did it even get _in_ here?) and maybe it breathes fire and it definitely has claws and _why is there a dragon in this school?_

“Does this happen a lot at Dalton?” Kurt asks, faintly.

The dragon snarls and spreads its wings.

“Well,” Blaine says, “not, like, every day.”

Kurt sways on his feet. He thinks he might pass out. Blaine looks over at him and makes a dismayed sound.

“Are you telling me you didn’t even bring a sword?”

“You’ll have to forgive me; I didn’t realise it would be necessary.” It’s what Kurt means to say, at least, but his throat seems to be paralysed and it all comes out in a kind of garbled mess. Even more worrying is the fact that his legs don’t seem to be working properly either, and the dragon is looking extremely unfriendly.

“Look,” Blaine says. “You have bullies; we have dragons. You can’t tell me you thought your new school wasn’t going to have _any_ problems.”

And then the dragon lunges and Kurt _screams_ and there’s a clattering of metal and the next moment Kurt is crouched on the floor and staring up at Blaine, who stands over him, the blade of his sword (and where did _that_ come from?) between the dragon’s teeth.

Part of Kurt thinks that in this moment, grim and determined and holding off a mythical monster, Blaine looks incredibly striking. The rest of him is mostly just hyperventilating.

“You might want to put one of those over your uniform,” Blaine says, nodding towards the corner of the room while simultaneously, and Kurt cannot mentally stress this enough, _holding back a snarling dragon_. With a sword. In its mouth. Blaine is gripping the handle of a sword inches away from a dragon’s teeth, and he is giving Kurt suggestions in the same tone in which he might say ‘hey, you should probably be holding onto the sides of the rollercoaster’. “There’s going to be a lot of blood.”

Kurt allows himself to take his eyes off the enraged dragon for a quarter of a second in order to glance in the direction indicated. There’s what looks like a pile of labcoats against the wall. While he doesn’t really want to get dragon blood (assuming Blaine is referring to the dragon’s blood; Kurt certainly hopes it’s not going to be Blaine’s or his own) on his new uniform, his legs are strongly opposed to performing their duties at the moment, and so he stays where he is.

“Well,” Blaine says, “if you’re sure. Do you think you’d be able to go around and stamp on its tail for me?”

_So much no,_ Kurt is presently incapable of saying.

“Don’t worry about it,” Blaine says. He high-kicks the dragon’s neck, pulls his sword free when the dragon opens its mouth to roar and then drives the blade into the dragon’s throat.

-

Blaine has to physically support Kurt out of the room, where ‘physically support’ means ‘practically carry’. Had Kurt been left to his own devices, he’d probably have stayed in there for days, just staring at the enormous corpse. Actually, had Kurt been left to his own devices, he’d have been torn apart by the dragon before any corpse-staring became possible, but you know.

David raises his eyebrows when he sees them. “Always knew slaying a dragon together could be romantic.”

“He kind of freaked out,” Blaine says. “I think maybe we dropped him in at the deep end. I don’t think there were any dragons at his old school.”

There is a moment’s silence.

“ _Seriously?_ ” David asks.

“And you took him in there?” Wes asks. “On his own? You were so blasé about asking him to be your backup, we just assumed he’d done this before.”

“You should have let us go in with you, man,” David says.

“I know,” Blaine says. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.” He’s looking at Wes and David as he says it, but he tightens his hold on Kurt’s side, so Kurt thinks maybe the apology is directed at him as well. And that’s something, although it’s not nearly enough to make up for what he just had to live through in there.

“You okay, Kurt?” Wes asks, putting a hand on Kurt’s shoulder.

Kurt still feels incapable of speaking, but he gives Wes a look that he hopes will convey his sincere combination of gratitude for the concern and incredulity at the fact that _nobody told him about the dragons, seriously, how is that not the sort of thing that people mention?_

“I’ll call the cleaners in to deal with it,” David says.

“Thanks,” Blaine says. “C’mon, Kurt; it looks like you need something to eat.”

-

Some of the boys make sympathetic faces at Blaine and Kurt as they walk through the hallways, arms around each other, covered in drying dragon blood. Not a single one of them looks remotely taken aback. Apparently, this really is a relatively common occurrence at Dalton. ‘Relative’ here, of course, meaning ‘relative to the rest of the world’, where, Kurt is fairly certain, people _never_ have to slay dragons that are getting in the way of an acapella rehearsal.

They reach the dining hall, and Blaine, on an unspoken agreement, buys Kurt approximately all the food in there. Halfway through his second helping of potatoes, Kurt feels he’s finally regained enough mental and physical strength to speak.

“I can’t believe you didn’t mention this before.”

“Mention what?”

Kurt stares at him. “Blaine, are you actually asking? Are you telling me you honestly can’t think of anything I might have wanted to know before I came here?”

“Oh, that,” Blaine says. “Yeah, sorry for not telling you. I guess it kind of slipped my mind.”

“It _slipped your mind?_ ”

“I didn’t realise it was that big a deal.”

“ _Not a big deal?_ ” Kurt hadn’t even realised that his own voice could go that high. If Blaine says one more ridiculous thing, it’ll be in serious danger of leaving the stratosphere entirely. “I told you I was being bullied. You said this was a great place to get away from that.”

“And it is! That’s not a problem here. At all.”

“You have _dragons_ here, Blaine. _Dragons_. You have _flying monsters that are trying to kill you_. And you suggested that I come here to get away from bullying?”

“Dragons aren’t prejudiced,” Blaine says, as if it should be obvious. “It doesn’t matter if you’re gay or straight; they’re going to try and eat you just the same. We’re all on a level playing field here.”

Kurt stares at him. In some insane way, it almost makes sense.

“So,” Blaine says, folding his arms on the table, “what do you say I give you some swordsmanship lessons?”


	2. Chapter 2

“Hey,” Blaine says. “I feel kind of bad about the dragon thing.”

“Really?” Kurt says, not looking up from his English homework. “I’d already forgotten about being sent unarmed into a room with an angry firebreathing fictional reptile, myself.”

“You know, dragons don’t actually breathe fire. Those are just stories.”

Kurt looks at him. “What is it, Blaine?”

“I got you a present,” Blaine says, grinning. “C’mon.”

-

Blaine insists on leading Kurt to his present blindfolded, to which Kurt reluctantly agrees only after Blaine promises to rectify any resulting irregularities in his hair. Kurt becomes more uneasy when he feels himself being led out into the freezing air.

“Are you taking me to the woods?”

Blaine drapes a coat over him, and Kurt lifts his arms so he can pull them through the sleeves. “You’ll see.”

“You’re taking me to the woods.” It feels like Blaine is doing up the buttons now. It must be Blaine’s coat; the way it sits on Kurt doesn’t feel quite right. “It _rained_ yesterday.”

“Look,” Blaine says, putting his hands on Kurt’s waist to begin guiding him again, “I swear I’ll get you through this with minimal clothing damage. Okay?”

“Okay,” Kurt says. “You’re so paying for my dry cleaning, though.”

-

They keep walking for what feels like at least ten minutes, long enough for Kurt’s toes to go numb in the cold and for him to lose any sense of which direction they’re going in, although the feeling of Blaine’s hands, warm and firm on his sides, is disorienting enough on its own. Eventually, though, they come to a halt.

“All right!” Blaine says, whipping the blindfold away. “Here she is!”

Kurt blinks as his eyes adjust to the light in the clearing, and then he realises when he’s looking at and is tempted to reblindfold himself. This is _stupid_.

“Not that I actually medically need a ‘thank you’ or anything,” Blaine says, after a pause, “but you have no idea how annoying it is to catch one of these things.”

Kurt stares at the unicorn. The unicorn, tethered to a tree, gazes placidly back at him.

“Blaine,” he says. “You know that conversation we had about you not telling me things?”

“Not telling you _thing_ ,” Blaine objects. “You were pissed off because I failed to tell you a very specific _one thing_ about this school. This is a completely different thing I didn’t tell you about.”

Kurt folds his arms.

“Much less dangerous,” Blaine adds, as an afterthought.

“Let me make this absolutely clear,” Kurt says. “From now on, whenever I express astonishment at not being told about _one_ mythological creature, you can take it as your cue to tell me about any others that might be around.”

“Okay,” Blaine says, “but, come on, how many times is that going to happen now?”

“I don’t know; is there anything I still don’t know about?”

“Well, there’s the hydra,” Blaine says, thoughtfully.

Kurt gapes at him.

“I’m kidding. Are you going to say hi to your new unicorn or not?”

“Oh, I _suppose_ ,” Kurt says, with a pointed sigh. He takes a couple steps toward the unicorn, then stops.

The horn looks very sharp.

“It’s not going to hurt you,” Blaine says from behind him. “They don’t attack humans.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I am _almost totally certain_ that unicorn is not going to kill you.”

“How reassuring.”

“It’s only young. It probably doesn’t even know proper goring technique yet.”

Kurt turns to give him an incredulous look. Blaine beams unhelpfully and gestures him onward.

All right. It’s a unicorn. Kurt can’t actually say that he trusts Blaine not to knowingly send him to meet something that’s going to murder him, after the dragon incident, but, as fairytale creatures go, unicorns are definitely less scary. And it doesn’t really look aggressive, at least. And it’s tied to the tree, so it can’t chase him if things go wrong. Kurt moves toward it, a careful step at a time, until he’s close enough to reach out and brush its fur with his fingers.

He touches it on the cheek, cautiously, and the unicorn tilts its head into his hand and... purrs, which doesn’t seem a very equine thing to do. It seems kind of ridiculous to be surprised by the sound a unicorn makes, though. Encouraged, he steps a little closer and runs his fingers through its silvery mane.

The unicorn’s pelt is incredibly soft. It would make a divine fur coat. He tries not to think that too loudly, because for all he knows unicorns could be able to read minds.

“Really,” he says, “it was a nice thing to do, if, you know, weird, but how am I meant to look after it?”

“Well, obviously you won’t be allowed to bring it inside,” Blaine says. “It’s not like a pet. The unicorn will look after itself, but now it knows you. If you want it, just wait at the edge of the woods and it’ll find you.” There’s a pause, and then he adds, “Provided you don’t have sex.”

Kurt, who was drawing breath to ask another question, chokes on air and drops into a coughing fit. The unicorn shies away in alarm.

“Not... with the unicorn,” Blaine clarifies. “Although you probably shouldn’t have sex with the unicorn either.”

“I didn’t actually think you meant the unicorn, but thank you for making this conversation even more horrifying,” Kurt says. “ _Provided I don’t have sex?_ ”

“They’ll stay away from you if you’re not a virgin,” Blaine says. “You’re going to have to make a choice between having a sex life and having a unicorn. Which kind of sucks, but most schools don’t even give you the unicorn option. So.”

“I’m not sure it’s a choice for me,” Kurt says, running a hand over the unicorn’s flank. “The opportunity to have a sex life hasn’t really arisen. I think it’s more a case of a unicorn consolation prize.”

Which is probably saying too much. He feels a little sick, suddenly, and crouches down to examine the unicorn’s hooves so he doesn’t have to look at Blaine’s expression.

There’s a long silence. The unicorn’s hooves look like they’re made of solid silver.

“It’ll be mature in about eight months,” Blaine’s voice says. So he’s going the ‘ignoring the stupid thing Kurt just said’ route. Kurt can deal with that. “You’ll be able to ride it then.”

Riding a unicorn certainly sounds tempting. Rachel is going to be incredibly jealous.

“And I can tell you that that horn is going to be extremely useful against any dragons that land outside the school,” Blaine adds.

“I suppose riding a unicorn into battle against a dragon would be among my more impressive anecdotes,” Kurt concedes.

“I’m telling you this because I want you to be sure.”

“Sure about what?” Kurt asks, a little preoccupied by thoughts about what design of armour he would wear as a unicorn-riding knight.

The unicorn takes a few steps backward, away from Kurt. Kurt stands up again, feeling a little rejected, and then he finds out why it moved away when warm arms slip around him from behind and he starts so violently that – 

“Oh, God,” Kurt says.

“ _Ow_ ,” Blaine says through his laughter.

Oh, God, Blaine was _being intimate_. It’s not like a pat on the knee or a hand on the back; it’s a sign of things Kurt has barely allowed himself to hope about after too many disappointments, and he responded by basically headbutting Blaine in the face. Kurt loathes himself.

“I’m really, really sorry,” Kurt says, desperately. “Tell me I didn’t break your nose.”

“I’m fine, really,” Blaine says, contradictorily rubbing a hand over his face and wincing. “It was a shock, that’s all. I should have given you some warning.”

Kurt takes a deep breath. He’s almost afraid to ask. “What were you doing?”

“I was going to tell you,” Blaine says, “and I think I’m going to hold your hand for this instead, because my other plan didn’t really work out...”

Kurt nods, because he doesn’t trust himself to say anything when his throat feels this obstructed by sheer shame, and holds his hand out. Blaine takes it.

“I was going to tell you,” Blaine says, “that maybe you want to wait, or maybe you don’t want it at all, and that’s fine, but – ” and it’s only when Blaine hesitates that Kurt realises maybe he’s not the only one feeling awkward here – “you definitely have a choice, Kurt.”

Not even the dragon made Kurt feel this convinced he was dreaming. Blaine is still looking into his eyes, and this is probably the perfect opportunity to kiss him, but Kurt just stands there, staring numbly at him, until Blaine lets go of his hand and the moment disappears.

“Kurt?” Blaine asks after a moment, his tone slightly concerned.

“It’s getting dark,” Kurt manages to say. His own voice sounds somehow unfamiliar. “We should probably be heading back.”

Blaine nods and, after a moment, looks away. “Do you mind untying the unicorn? It’ll be calmer if you’re the one with it.”

Kurt therefore becomes possibly the only person ever to untether a unicorn without actually thinking about the unicorn. He’s really screwed this up.

The unicorn nuzzles his hand before it leaves, as if to remind him that at least he still has his consolation prize, even if he’s incapable of getting anything right, and then he and Blaine are left alone in the darkening clearing. Kurt starts walking back in the direction of the school, unable to make himself look directly at Blaine, and Blaine follows. They usually walk alongside each other; it makes Kurt uneasy, only knowing Blaine is there from the sound of his feet rustling the leaves.

Screw the moment, Kurt suddenly decides after two minutes’ walking in silence, and he turns around and grabs Blaine by the arms and kisses him. It only lasts a second or two, and it’s not really planned, so he misses slightly, gets the corner of Blaine’s mouth, but the intention is clear.

Blaine laughs (he _laughs_ , maybe it’s not the ideal reaction but Kurt just _kissed him_ and he doesn’t seem even slightly horrified). “You’re lucky I didn’t headbutt you there. Are you trying to help me get my accidental revenge?”

“ _Blaine_ ,” Kurt says, and he’s appalled by how high and pleading his own voice comes out.

Blaine laughs again, and puts his hands on Kurt’s hips (with what Kurt feels is unfairly exaggerated caution), and leans in to kiss him properly.

-

“I do kind of want to ride a unicorn,” Kurt says when they break apart, breathlessly. “Once.”

Blaine grins. “I’ll wait.”

They walk back to the school arm-in-arm.


End file.
